David Byrne On The Wall Street Soundtrack

Via David Byrne’s mailing list, notes on his substantial contribution to Oliver Stone’s latest. “On Friday, the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps comes out, and I’m all over the soundtrack! Oliver Stone’s film recreates scenes from the bank collapses and bailouts, and the attendant shenanigans of a couple of years ago… and of course Gekko is back. Stone approached me about music a while back, and I met him at an office and gave him a pile of records. He ended up mainly using a lot of songs from my recent collaboration with Brian Eno (“Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”), a few songs from recent solo and dance score records, and a reprise of “This Must Be The Place,” the Talking Heads song that was used in the first Wall Street movie. It was almost like I’d scored the picture. Stone was super accommodating – inviting me numerous times to view rough assemblies to be sure I was OK with how the music was being used. This is pretty unusual; most times licensing a song for a movie is a bureaucratic formality, and the artist is never invited into the process. That said, I’ve only turned down movie song use once or twice for aesthetic reasons – if I thought a scene made unfortunate associations with a song. If you’ve got these recordings already, this all won’t mean anything to you, but if not, and if you see the movie and wonder, what was that music? – here is your answer. The music, along with some score pieces by fellow Scot Craig Armstrong, is available today on iTunes, and via all the usual download and online outlets.” (Info.)

The first thing I noticed was the music (which I hardly ever do) and that continued throughout and that’s why I am at this site.

Next; the movie itself was well filmed and presented a tough subject. Over all I learned that Corporations/Banker/Anyone in chaoots with government is a bad thing; while capitalism without government can accomplish wonderful things (as if America doesn’t know this) as in the case of the the power company brought to fruition in the movie. Good movie story, acting and music.

“There are different signs that this is not stopping. I don’t think that anger and frustration and those feelings can go away. I hope they don’t. The attention and support for the victims needs to be continued, more than people worried about these abusers and what’s next for them, how are they going to move on — shut up. You know what? If any of these people come back, I would say, “I can’t wait to see who is actually going to support them.” That is going to be the glaring horror. Who is going to be, like, “This is a pressing issue, and we need to get them back?” If a janitor was so great at cleaning the building but also tended to masturbate in front of people, would the people at that building be like, “Yes, he masturbated, but I’ve never seen anyone clean so thoroughly, and I was just wondering when he’s going to get his job back, he’s so good at it.” No, it would be, “That’s not acceptable.” It’s fame and power that people are blinded by.”
~ Tig Notaro in the New York Times

“It’s never been easy. I’ve always been one of the scavenger dogs of film financing, picking up money here and there. I’ve been doing that all my life. This was one was relatively easy because certain costs have gone down so much. I made this film in 20 days whereas 30 years ago, it would have been made in 42.”
~ Paul Schrader